It Starts Like This
by Unidentified Pie
Summary: People say that the world ended when the plague struck, when people began dying and no one could save them. Kagura and Shinpachi and the rest of them, though, they know better. To them, it ended when Gintoki left and never came home. (Set before the second movie; a lot of spoilers.)


**A/N: The Be Forever Yorozuya movie screwed me up, and gave me a lot of angst to work with. I think heroesneedalancer will love this fic, or hate me for it. Possibly both.**

 **Ugh I dunno maybe it's too long? Sighs. Okay. Anyway. Kagura, Shinpachi, and the five years without their leader. It's one big angst-fest.**

 **I don't own Gintama.**

* * *

The world has ended.

The reporters say that it began with people dying to the mysterious plague, and the doctors probably say that it started with patient zero. Everyone says that the White Plague was the beginning of the end.

But to them, it started like this:

Gintoki left the house sometime in the middle of the night, silent as a ghost, and Kagura didn't hear him go.

He isn't home the next morning, and Kagura figures he's gone drinking again. But he's not home that day, or the next, or the next, and that's when they begin to worry.

He'll come back, she thinks. He'll come back, he'll come back, he'll come back.

Gin-chan always comes back.

"He's coming back," she tells Shinpachi resolutely. "He'll come back and then we'll hit him for being an idiot and we'll never let him out of our sight again, uh-huh."

She knows it's idealistic, and Shinpachi does as well, but when they've been around Gin-chan for so long it's simply impossible not to believe in impossibles and happy endings.

"Yeah," he says. "He'll come back."

-x-

They still go on jobs, but it's not the Yorozuya Gin-chan without Gin-chan. Shinpachi doesn't smile much anymore, and when he does it's the brittle, breaking smile of someone who's hurting.

Kagura doesn't blame him. She stares into the mirror sometimes, pulling at her cheeks and trying to smile - how did she ever smile the way she did before?

Oh, yeah, Gin-chan was there.

That's when the tears come, warm and wet and endless, and she falls onto the ground, dragging her knees to her chest.

Low, hoarse sobs drag themselves from her throat, ragged and desperate, and she gasps and sobs and cries until her dress is soaked in rapidly cooling liquid and then longer still. There's nothing to worry about, though, no reason to be quiet. Shinpachi's gone home, and the house is empty.

They actually get paid, now, but Kagura would give every cent on earth just to get Gin-chan back.

-x-

A plague strikes, and it's spreading all over the earth. The news reports hundreds of deaths every day, as Kagura and Shinpachi curl up on the sofas and watch, knowing that if Gin-chan was here he'd have his bokuto by his side and one hand up his nose as he left to save the earth in some fairytale miracle, knowing that if Gin-chan was here they'd be by his sides, laughing and teasing and together.

But with Gin-chan gone, the world seems to be drained of magic and miracles, and Kagura never realised quite how like her home planet earth is without Gin-chan.

She stares emptily at a white-haired corpse being carried out of the hospital, a woman trailing tearfully behind the stretcher, hands reaching and desperate and broken sobs rending Kagura's heart.

White haired male, dead. Every time she sees a plague victim, she sees Gin-chan, and every time she sees a mourning relative, she thinks of herself and Shinpachi and everyone he's left behind. Just her luck that this stupid plague turns everyone's hair white.

Kagura shakes herself. This is not her home planet; there is still hope.

Isn't there?

-x-

"Okay, so he won't be back for awhile," Kagura declares, and Shinpachi just stares silently at her. "He's gone away for a bit, so while he's gone obviously we have to protect what's still here. We've got to take care of the Yorozuya, so I'm gonna be the leader, now. From now on," she says, "I'm Gura-san, uh-huh."

Shinpachi just looks at her, quiet and still.

Then he turns away.

"Okay," he says, softly. "Okay."

No, Kagura wants to scream, there is nothing okay with this.

She wants to cry, because even before trying she knows that there is no way to take Gin-chan's place.

She's played the boss of the Yorozuya before, but not like this; never like this. Before, she'd always known where Gin-chan was, whether he was okay, that he was alive and well and slightly irritated by her crazy antics. Before, it had been nothing but a game of dress-up and annoy Gin.

This time it feels like she's trying to make up for his absence, trying desperately to fill his gap in the holes of everybody's hearts. She digs out one of his few spare gis and, carefully, cuts off the bottom half of it, sewing it carefully into a skirt. By the end of the night her fingers are thoroughly pricked and sore, and there's blood all over the white fabric, but she slides into it almost reverently and pretends that she's him.

She picks her nose, drinks strawberry milk, lounges and saunters and acts cool, but she can't quite imitate him right and maybe she's always known that she'd never be able to replace him, but she had to try.

They're drifting apart, all of them, Tae and Sa-chan and Kyuubei and the police force, because Gin-chan was the glue that held them all together and Kagura is nothing but a fraying string.

Come home, she thinks, begs, pleads, cries, screams. Come home come home come homecomehome _comehomeCOMEHOME_!

-x-

Everyone is fleeing the planet now. Papi sends her a letter and asks her to leave before she gets infected by this mysterious White Plague, but she sends back a refusal.

 _I can't_ , she writes. _Gin-chan will come home. He always comes home, uh-huh. But what if he comes home and we've all gone and he's the only one left? What if he walks into the apartment and finds no-one here, and he's all drunk and collapses in the corridor, and then no-one's here to put a blanket over him? No one should come home to an empty house, Papi. It's not right._

Then she looks around the very empty apartment, and she has to re-write the letter much later because the original one gets soaked and smudged by tears.

-x-

"Gin-chan, please," she says one morning, sitting on his futon, where she's taken to sleeping. "Please come home. I dunno what we did, but it can't be as bad as what you're doing now." Kagura listens hard, but there's only silence. "Everyone's falling apart without you, uh-huh. Shin-chan never smiles anymore. Not properly. It's like everyone's dying, uh-huh."

Nothing.

"Please, Gin-chan! We'll never ask for pay again! Lady boss will pay for all your parfait, too, uh-huh!" Her voice is rising, desperate, begging. "It'd be a really good time to come back, before everyone forgets you! You're supposed to be the protagonist - what sort of crappy main character leaves in the middle of an anime? I'm the heroine, ya know! You can't just leave the heroine and the straight man behind and go off somewhere!"

Silence.

"Why won't you answer?" She cries. "Why won't you just come back? We were supposed to be together forever! You can't just leave!"

There's no response, and Kagura doesn't even know why she tried.

She slams her fist into the wall and watches the wood crumble.

"I hate you," she says, choking back tears. "What happened to all that about treasuring us? What happened to what you told Papi? You're just a big, fat, lying idiot!"

 _I'll never forgive you_ , she thinks.

-x-

"Idiot," she mutters as she searches. "Stupid dummy. I hate you." They're looking for leads but they've been looking for weeks and no matter how high everyone is trying to keep their morale they are beginning to lose hope.

She walks into a shop on impulse - "Have you seen an idiot with a silver perm?"

The old man manning the counter blinks, then he asks: "Who?"

"Gin-chan!" Kagura cries, furious. Somehow she thinks that everyone should know him, the man who saved her and then left just like Papi did, who left them all alone. She thinks that the whole world should know about Gin-chan, just _because_.

He's saved the world, Kagura thinks. He's saved Edo _so many times_. It's not fair that no-one knows him.

"Sorry? I have a notebook here - found it in the forest a few days ago. It says Gin-san, though, not Gin-chan, are they the same-" The old man never gets to finish - Kagura snatches the book from his hands and flips it open to see a familiar messy scrawl. On the first page it says: "Property of Gin-san, do not touch."

Unmistakable, that handwriting. It's Gin-chan's for sure.

Yes, Kagura thinks, heart swelling even though she thought she hated him. Except she doesn't, not really, she could never hate Gin-chan and she knows it, but it's been so long and finally, finally-

She opens the book to a random page and gasps, breath catching in her throat. The White Plague, it says, with a date scribbled to one side. Fourth of July; a week before Gin-chan left. Way before the White Plague became widely known. Back when there were just a few, small reports of mysterious deaths and no one in Kabuki-cho had paid much notice.

No one in Kabuki-cho except Gin-chan.

Further down the page he's written, in messy, large letters, "Nano-machines"

Gin-chan knew about this, Kagura thinks, shaking. The plague isn't an accident.

Someone created it, and Gin-chan went to stop it.

-x-

He's not dead. He can't be dead, because Gin-chan is strong - strong enough that stupid, stupid Kamui-nii marked him; Gin-chan wouldn't die to something like this.

But everyone can die, and Kagura has seen Gin-chan on the verge of death far too many times for comfort. He works miracles; he always comes back.

Maybe, she thinks, there's a limit on miracles. Maybe every person is only entitled to so much luck. Maybe it's not enough that Gin-chan was the one to fight and claw his way back to life from the grip of death - maybe the universe is just this unfair.

In that moment, Kagura understands fiercely why people like the Kiheitai want to burn down the world. She wants to destroy it, too, and it's not because of logic or reason or anything she can think of. It's because there's so much pain and hurt and rage and loss, and there's nothing she can do but to lash out. It's only the thought of the people she will hurt that keeps her from going out and joining them, and even then, it's just barely.

-x-

Everyone is moving in different directions and Kagura gets the sinking feeling of the world falling apart around her as she watches history repeat itself.

Her family broke apart like this. Just like this.

And just like before, she cannot keep them together. Is there something wrong with her? Because surely, surely if she were good and sweet and better - if, maybe, she were more like Gin-chan, no one would leave, would they?

She begins to train - faster, faster, stronger, hit harder, harder, more, more, more. Be better - be more like Gin-chan. Be strong enough to hold everyone together - no use for weaklings, Kamui once said. She'd thought it was stupid at the time, but now she's grasping at straws. Kagura will do anything, anything she can do to hold her new family together.

She goes home tired and dirty and steely-eyed. Otose takes one look at Kagura and shakes her head - "He wouldn't have wanted this," she says.

Kagura looks at her, desperate, grazed hands balling into little white fists.

"Then what should I do?" Kagura asks, her voice plaintive. "We've gotta protect what he left here. And we weren't strong enough to protect him back then. Maybe if we were stronger, if we were better, he could've trusted us more…" Her faces scrunches up as she tries not to cry, but there's heat pooling behind her eyes and sobs ripping at her throat.

Warm arms circle her shoulders and Otose pulls her close. Kagura buries her head in the old lady's chest and wails.

"We should've been better," she chokes out. "We should have been there, but we weren't, and it's all our fault. Now everybody, everybody…"

"I know," Otose says, holding her close. "I know. But he wanted you safe, too."

-x-

Shinpachi is changing; so is Kagura. She thinks that this is what happens when you lose someone you love, but that's not quite true. She's lost her mother, before, and her father, and her brother, and it wasn't the same - it wasn't like this.

More often than not she feels the absence of Gintoki's guiding hand, an empty, aching hole where his advice and kindness should be. More often than not she thinks that it was and always has been Gin-chan who'd kept them who they were. It was Gin-chan who'd taught them how to fight while staying true to themselves - it was Gin-chan who'd taught them but allowed them to grow as themselves.

Without him they are changing. Without him they are warping, and this too leaves Kagura feeling lost and scared. She does not want to be someone else. She wants to be the girl that Gin-chan taught her to be - she wants to be like him.

She does not cry. Gin-chan never cried; in this, at least, she will be like him.

-x-

She can't bear this.

Shinpachi's face has taken on a gaunt, sad look, and they can't even look each other in the eyes anymore because they - both of them - are weak, too weak to look at each other and see the pain in their eyes when the burden is already unbearable.

They fight, and in this Shinpachi too has become more like Gin-chan. He bares his teeth and antagonises Kagura and pretends that he doesn't care, and Kagura remembers a time when he wouldn't have been able to fake this to save his life. Shinpachi was biggest failure in pretending not to care. Gin-chan pretended best, and cared the most.

She wants the old Shinpachi back. She wants the old Yorozuya back. She wants to stop fighting and just laugh.

Mostly, she wants Gin-chan back. She wants her family together; she wants to remember what it was like to be happy.

It doesn't happen, and a point comes where they just break. She can't stand looking at the pain in Shinpachi's eyes and he never looks at her face anymore, and now they fight like enemies instead of siblings. They pretend they don't care so much that the act and emotions tear them apart, and even that is easier than revealing that they do care, and seeing just how much pain the other is in.

The problem, she knows, is that they care too much. Maybe they think that separation will fix things - time heals all wounds, right? - Kagura doesn't know. She just knows, one day, that neither of them can take it, and as they stand fighting in the apartment she sees her pain mirrored in him; the same hunch of his shoulders, the same broken eyes. And she knows that faking will break them, and that seeing this pain in each other will make them fall.

(Just a while ago they met up and managed to get along fine. Kagura realised how much she missed looking at Shinpachi's warm brown eyes as they exchanged insults, and then they wanted to go eat together and Kagura thought: this can work-

-then she said, "We should buy back a parafit for Gin-chan", and the look on Shinpachi's face made her whole world shatter. And that's why they can't be together, because when they're together and getting along it feels like Gin-chan is still there, and they forget that he's gone. When they remember it's like being stabbed in the chest - Kagura would know how that feels, thankyouverymuch, and this is much worse.)

So now they break apart in a fit of angry words and yelling that conceals the words neither can say.

 _I'm sorry, I want to help, please stop looking so sad._

 _-_ x-

And then Gin-chan's been gone for three years - it shouldn't surprise Kagura when they put up a grave.

But it does. Otose is the one who suggests it, puffing a stream of grey smoke from her cigarette, and Kagura stares with horror and shock tangled tight around her heart as the Shinsengumi and Katsura agree. _Zura_ agrees; this shocks the breath out of her and she finds that she's suffocating.

 _Zura_ , who fought in the war. Zura, who is idealistic beyond belief. Zura, who Kagura always believed was Gin-chan's friend. Zura thinks that they should build him a grave. .

But he's not dead, she thinks with helpless desperation. He's not dead - Gin-chan can't be dead. They can't just give up - they can't just move on and leave Gin-chan behind.

She stands abruptly, knocking over her barstool, and turns to leave in the sudden, hushed silence of the room.

-x-

"They can't build a grave," she says, and she wants to scream, cry, fight - anything, anything to get rid of the terrible, desperate pain in her heart. "They can't. That's giving up hope. Gin-chan never gave up hope, right Sadaharu?"

Sadaharu barks, pressing his giant, fuzzy head against her chest, warm and solid and the only one in the world she can turn to now.

"Gin-chan always kept fighting." Her voice is small and squeezed from her throat, her chest aching. A gasp tears from her lips and her shoulders heave. "Why did he leave?"

Sadaharu whines and pushes at her chest with his damp nose. Kagura fists her hands in his warm fur as a scream sticks in her throat.

"Why won't he come back?"

Sadaharu's whine almost sounds like a sob.

-x-

People say that the world ended when a third of the population was decimated by sickness and anyone with the money fled the planet.

To them, though, the world ended when Gin-chan left and didn't come home. Like soldiers that cannot move without a command from their commander, they cannot move without Gin-chan's order. Time, to them, has stopped, and even as they grow older and stronger and different, they are waiting, waiting, always waiting.

-x-

"He's coming back," Kagura says defiantly. She glares at Shinpachi, daring him to deny that.

Gin-chan was observant, Kagura thinks. Gin-chan was the one who kept the keychains she gave them and made Shinpachi do the same. Gin-chan was the one who dressed up as Santa and brought her exactly what she wanted on Christmas. He was the one who noticed her eyeing pretty ornaments and bought them for her, who gathered everyone to comfort her when she was down.

Gin-chan would have noticed her hands shaking by her sides, even though she tried to hide them. He would have seen the tears that threatened to fall from her burning eyes.

Shinpachi isn't Gin-chan, though. He doesn't see, he doesn't notice. Kagura thinks that she's grateful for that.

(Though she knows that she's really not. She wants Gin-chan back - she wants him to sigh and run a hand through his eternally unruly hair, and make everything better the way he always did.)

"Then why isn't he back by now?" Shinpachi asks, with a desperate edge in his voice. Kagura flinches.

"He-" He what? Forgot them? Not possible - Gin-chan would never forget the Yorozuya. He can't be injured; if he were injured he'd be dead by now.

But he can't be dead.

"Maybe we should grow up," Shinpachi says, and Kagura feels something shatter inside her, with a burst of white-hot fury and desperate, jagged pain.

"Growing up and giving up are _different_ ," she tells Shinpachi, with tears burning in her eyes. She spins on her heel and leaves before they can fall.

-x-

She runs into Okita on the street, and he's just what she needs. She's seething with fury and there's fire instead of blood under her skin, her fingers growing claws instead of nails.

"I heard that they want to put up a grave for the boss," he says, and something breaks inside her, a terrible snap that fills her with hurting rage. She snarls unintelligibly at him, an animalistic sound of fury and pain.

He must see the break in her eyes, and as she fists her hands and slams forward he draws his sword.

There is nothing childish or fun in their fight; nothing to make her feel comforted or alive. She feels like a beast made of fury and pain, lunging and feinting and slamming violent punches against the steel of Okita's sword. There's sweat on her brow and trickling past her lips, clumping her fringe together so that matted bunches of hair slap her damp face. Her chest heaves rapidly, going up and down with desperate gasps.

Once upon a time she would have smirked at the thought of how Gin-chan would react to all the property damage, but he's gone now and there's no one left to care. A shriek tears from her throat, bursting raw and harsh into the world to tear apart the skies. She chokes down ragged breaths and curses and curses and curses, damn this stupid world, damn the fate that took everything and everyone from her-

-damn it all.

They break apart and she stands facing Okita, shoulders shaking with fury, hand clenched so tight around her umbrella that even with its reinforced strength she thinks that it is going to shatter. Their breaths are ragged and jarring in the ravaged air.

"Your face looks really ugly, China," says Okita, with none of his usual mockery. His eyes are soft with what is almost concern, but the sadist would never feel concerned over this, over her-

-right?

It's only when she snarls and rubs a hand over her burning eyes that she discovers that her face wasn't covered in sweat.

Her eyes are wet with tears.

-x-

They put up a grave, but in the end no one puts anything in the coffin. It's apparently traditional to at least bury some of his belongings, but none of them can put a single thing of Gintoki's into it.

"That stupid perm-head hasn't paid all his debts," Otose says, puffing a breath of grey smoke. I'm just going to reclaim all his possessions."

And maybe it's only in that moment that Kagura truly realises that they aren't burying Gin-chan, not really. They're not giving up on him, on hope.

It's only when they all show up around the gravestone that says Sakata Gintoki, with nothing of his in their hands but a million little trinkets of their own - a cigarette from Hijikata, a Justaway from Katsura, a bottle of cheap wine from Otose - that Kagura realises that they're just putting little bits of themselves away. They all need closure, because if a person is dead you mourn and move on, taking your broken, shattered bits and trying to glue them together, and if a person is alive you celebrate and laugh and drink. But if a person is missing and you don't know - can't know - if he is alive or dead; that's when you go mad. You crack piece by piece, shatter so slowly you barely notice it, but as days drag on you find your edges missing and chipped, pieces of your heart and soul falling out when you don't notice it.

They're holding on to hope, holding on to him, but they can't keep carrying that decaying piece of brokenness inside them. They need to move on, the way he would have done, and even if they look for him around every corner or spin at any glimpse of silver, they cannot keep telling each other that "he'll stumble home any moment now".

Because it doesn't work that way.

So they'll bury those little bits, and they won't talk about him every day, but they'll remember, and wait, and try to let those jagged wounds heal.

Seita darts forward and tosses in a history textbook, then sneaks a quick look at Tsukuyo and tosses in a journal that looks suspiciously like a piece of english homework.

Using Gin-chan's grave as a homework disposal site. Seita catches Kagura looking and gives her a sheepish grin, and Kagura thinks that this is just the sort of thing that Gin-chan would approve of.

She grins at him, the wide smile that she shares with Gin-chan, truly happy for the first time in what feels like months. Seita beams at her, and Kagura finds that she likes that brat a whole lot more than she knew.

Shinpachi throws in an Otsuu CD and Tama drops in a screw, and before anyone can say a word or shut the coffin, Kagura steps forward and shoves her hand into her pocket, pulling out a piece of sukonbu and dropping it in as well.

"Too bad, you stupid perm-head," she says, grinning. "No parfait for you."

* * *

 **Thanks for reading!**

 **God bless!**


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